


Galvanic Movements

by PuzzleRaven



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, Murder, Organized Crime, Other, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24320746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuzzleRaven/pseuds/PuzzleRaven
Summary: After the school meeting Shadow Stalker goes after Taylor and meets her father...(In this story, Taylor triggered. Read its other half, Galvanising the Union, for the one where she didn't.)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Galvanising the Union](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15841368) by [PuzzleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuzzleRaven/pseuds/PuzzleRaven). 



**Galvanising the Union** / **Galvanic Movements**

  
Twenty years before, no one would have dared cross him like this. He looked out of the window, watching the rain falling, and considered if it was time to get the old group together, to let out the rage burning in him in a slaughter and remind the world why no one messed with him or his family. He thought of his old friend, smiling smugly across the floor at him, thinking he was untouchable. His fists tightened. No one betrayed him like that. A kneecapping at the least, or line the man's family up and cut their throats in front of him, for the sheer lack of honour he had shown. A quiet voice drew him out of his thoughts.  
  
"Dad? Is there any more garbage to go out?"

_\- Then -_

  
Twenty years ago he had had everything: money, respect, fear, family. Ten years ago he'd had family and thought that would be enough.Times had been changing, and going from a Man of Respect to a respectable man seemed the most sensible thing, after all the rules changed.  
  
He had known of Marquis, respected the crimelord to a degree. Then the word reached him: Marquis attacked in his own home by the Brockton Bay Brigade. An utter violation of the unwritten rules by so-called heroes, and if he had not noticed what the media were not saying he would had have sent some people to their homes to make sure they knew why the rules existed (and wasn't that an ironic thought? Fleur had had it coming.) He had been too pre-occupied by what was missing: there was no word of Marquis' daughter. He had put out feelers, looked to see if she was on the street, but there was nothing. The girl had just vanished. If the heroes would kill a child, and could cover the death up so completely, what would happen to his little girl when he got caught? He had a wife, and a toddling, bubbly, little daughter, and that changed a man's priorities. He had to be there for them, but he couldn't just retire, not with the Birdcage sentence hanging over his head ready to drop at any moment. It would never go away, and he could not even cut a deal with the Feds.  
  
Finding ChangeChild had been a stroke of luck, if assassination attempts can be called lucky. It hadn't felt that way when the shapestealer was trying to kill him, but the strange cape had a kill order on his/her head, allegedly from impersonating the wrong person at the wrong time and hearing something (s)he should not have. God knows what ChangeChild had really done, and yeah, even impersonating Rebecca Costa-Brown should not have induced a country-wide shitstorm of that degree, but once he had stopped the cape's mimic-and-murder plot ChangeChild had been willing to cut a deal.  
  
(S)he didn't just mimic shapes: spend long enough near someone and they could mimic form, personality and even powers perfectly. Even longer and they could become them, right down to the quirks people never knew they had. Even power nullification would not revert it then: it took an active use of the cape's power to change shape, not to hold it. (S)he liked being Galvanate, liked the cash he'd offered to give his/her family more, and seemed think the Birdcage was the only safe place (s)he could go. So, after one staged fight 'ChangeChild' was dead, 'Galvanate' was birdcage-bound, and Danny Hebert was happily settling in to family life in a new city.

  
_\- Now -_

  
Shadow Stalker perched in the tree, taking aim as she watched the byplay by the kitchen door. Taylor's worthless dock-worker father ruffled worthless Taylor's worthless hair before Taylor started down the steps carrying the garbage to the dumpster. He'd taken to doing that after the school meeting, trying to make the kid think he cared, after Barnes had chewed him up and spat him out. Well, she had heard from Emma that Hebert was trying to get a lawyer, and her dad was stepping all over that. Taylor thought she had some form of proof, so Sophia just needed to remind her no one cared what she had and bully her into giving it up. She wasn't going to juvie just because Taylor got big ideas. With a wimp like Taylor, after Sophia had spent two years crushing the bitch, scaring her straight would be easy. Shoot at the right time, make Taylor jump and the broken step would do the rest. Even if she saw the bolt, it would vanish from evidence the second Sophia got to it. At this range, she couldn't miss.  
  
She watched. One step, then the back foot lifted, and the bolt left her crossbow. Right on target. Taylor jumped at the hiss of the air cartridge, dropped her head right into line of fire. Stupid - Shadow Stalker tensed, thoughts rushing through her head. She'd have to kill the father as well, make sure it could be covered up, maybe they could both vanish...  
  
Her crossbow bolt shattered on Taylor's eye. The girl looked straight at her, as stunned as she was. Taylor-target-Hebert was a fucking cape? Didn't matter. She'd been seen, and if a cape testified - Sophia phased, jumped from the tree and launched herself towards Taylor in her shadow state. Phase a knife inside her and it would not matter how invulnerable she was. Then to finish off the father and see if she could phase bodies into concrete. With no proof, she'd be safe. She hardly heard the door open but she heard the enraged shout, as the man's hand went through her shadowy arm and closed on Taylor's shoulder the second before Shadowstalker's fist hit.  
  
"...kill _my_ daughter!?"  
  
And she struck the lightning.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written to alternate chapters with Galvanising the Union, but given the very different ratings, I've split them into two stories. Expect this to be darker.


	2. Galvanic Movements 1

**Galvanic Movements - 1**

  
"Taylor? Taylor?" His daughter was sitting on the steps, far too still, her eyes glassy and far away. He got his coat, put it round her, and hugged her tight. "It's going to be fine."  
  
"She’s..." _She's dead. Good._ He finished the thought vindictively. The heroes had just tried to kill his little girl. He'd lost Annette, he'd burn the city down before he let them touch Taylor. Taylor, who was frozen in his arms.  
  
"She can't hurt you any more," he said, taking a sick pleasure in the death of the Ward who’d zip-tied his concussed daughter at the word of Emma Barnes, the bully and her little friends... He swore outloud, and Taylor jumped jerkily in his arms. Unmasking rules applied to dead capes, but if he’d been one for rules, he’d never have been Birdcaged-bound. He walked over anyway, yanked the mask off the corpse.  
  
"Son of a motherfucking bitch!" Sophia Hess was charred, eyeballs burned black, insects already crawling over her face, but still clearly recogniseable as the same bullying bitch from the school meeting. Had this been a Protectorate matter? Had they been targetting his family to drive him out, hurting his daughter to get to him? Or just sacrificing one of the little people to keep their pet psychopath happy? He saw red.  
  
"Sophia." Taylor’s voice broke. He hadn’t heard her move, but she was standing behind to him, frozen, his coat discarded on the step. The silence was so deep he could hear the insects buzzing.  
  
"Yeah." He’d go to the media, get this to go viral, but the P.R.T. would just shut him down or look at his family too closely. Rage and frustration burned. He’d got his daughter back for one awkward visit after she walked out because of the bitch on the ground, even if all she came back for were clothes and memories, and now he couldn’t do anything to keep her safe.  
  
"So that's why the school..." Her voice was unnaturally flat.  
  
“Yeah.” He looked aback at the broken step, saw that the light had shattered as he idly batted away the frantic swarm of moths that surrounded them, ignoring the exposed glowing filament. Several had settled into Taylor’s hair. A grim suspicion formed.  
  
"Taylor, in the locker, did you-?" The words stuck in his throat. She looked up, shaking her head unconvincingly as the insects buzzed more furiously. “You triggered. You got powers.” He wasn’t asking. He was going to kill the fucking P.R.T.  
  
"Yes." She squared her shoulders. How had he failed her this badly? "In the locker."  
  
"Skitter. You're Skitter." She nodded, guardedly. So the P.R.T. had tried to hit her at home, no kill order, no nothing, just a single operative with a ranged weapon straight out of his own playbook. They couldn’t know about him, or they’d have killed him first. He kicked the corpse with a foot.  
  
“We need to get rid of this.” Calling the police was unthinkable: his daughter, his Skitter had killed a Ward. The swirling clouds of insects swarmed and buzzed around her, and then cloud descended and began to feed.  
  
"I'll handle this. Go inside." Her voice was flat and unemotional as she dismissed him utterly, lifting a phone from her pocket. He stared as she dialled. Who the hell could she be calling, and then it hit him hard.  
  
"Your new friends." The ones she’d run away from him for? She didn’t answer. “Taylor?” His voice was weak even to his own ears as he watched the thing that twitched and buzzed on the ground. Where had insect control come from? Unless Annette had been holding out on him, but he knew Taylor was his. They’d sent a copy of the DNA test to her godmother to prove it.  
  
“Go inside,” she said again, putting the phone away. He obeyed the flat voice, hating himself. It was easy to identify them now he knew: The Undersiders. A cheap disposable team of mooks. He’d used similar for dumb muscle and distraction back in the day, and someone would be using these. The Undersiders had a Thinker. Going near them was too great a risk he’d be outed. She’d taken after him, and Annette’s little girl, and he felt nothing, not pride, not even failure. He should have been the one training her, not some second-tier wastes.  
  
“Mind the light,” he said, futily. She nodded without even looking round.  
  


_#_

  
He stayed inside, watched from the window as his daughter’s so-called friends cleaned up what was left. The tall dark skinned man had to be Grue. He was shovelling the bones into a bag with gloved hands, ignoring the insects that still feasted on them. The blonde, the Thinker, looked up at the window as Taylor gestured and he stepped back, out of sight. Never give a Thinker information. When he peered again, the blonde wasn’t smiling, had a hand on Taylor’s shoulder and was saying something he couldn’t hear. It cut him to the bone as he watched the girl give the support he couldn’t because she was there. They finished quickly, Grue throwing the bag into the trunk of the car. Without a backward glance, his Taylor climbed into the back seat with the blonde Thinker, and the car started.  
  
He watched from the window as the most valuable thing in his life walked out of it. What was left of Danny Hebert died.


	3. Galvanic Movements 2

**Galvanic Movements - Chapter Two**

  
  
A harried-looking Danny Hebert made it into work early, as stressed as he had been every morning since his daughter had run away following the disastrous school meeting. He had plans for Principal Blackwell as well as Barnes, along with every other member of the Winslow faculty, but his daughter must come first.  
  
His normal sheaf of newspapers was under his arm, and he spread them out on the desk to go through for stories that might lead to contracts or work for the Union, as he did every day. Rage hidden under his ineffectual job-seeking guise, Galvanate also checked for mention of Shadow Stalker's disappearance, or the Undersiders and his daughter. He found none. Either there was no investigation yet, or the authorities were keeping very quiet.  
  
Reading between the lines in the crime sections let him map out the areas in his head, the ever-shifting boundaries between the various groups that controlled the city. The Protectorate were irrelevant for his purposes. They had little actual power, outside formal organisations and force projection, but they also had nothing practical he wanted. The PRT could only kill him, or Birdcage him again. He smiled. The news a – presumed - innocent was in the Birdcage in his place would be a stab to the heart of the system. He’d wait until the strike would be fatal.  
  
That left the gangs as his best place to start. The Empire's structure and powerbase meant it was the most dangerous of the groups to take on. Subverting their members would result in him being forced to join, and he was no one's subordinate. The ABB with their scant capes could be useful to take territory from, but Lung may burn the city rather than lose it. Coil was an unknown, probably a Thinker, who worked too much like Galvanate for him to take on until his own powerbase was secure. That left the Merchants, and they wouldn’t even notice they'd lost ground until it was his.  
  
He went out again at lunchtime, batteries in a sock in his pocket, gun under his coat. It wasn't licenced, and it wasn't his. He passed the group by the gates, passed the dolled-up woman who had to be working them, and started walking. He knew the streets, but they weren't his. Not yet. Picking up a sandwich as a cover for his absence, he listened to the gossip. No work, bad situations, it was the sort of thing he heard all day, but he couldn’t trust any of them. He knew them too well and, Union or not, they'd sell a new cape to the PRT instantly for cash in hand and a way out of the Bay.  
  
They said the Union stood together, but none of them had been there when he needed them. Not when his wife had died, he'd had to go to Barnes, not when his daughter had ben hospitalised, not when Blackwell ignored the bullying to protect that lying waste that pretended to be a hero. He was on his own.  
  
On his way back in, he passed the same sad hooker loitering round the gates, talking to the men. She was still there when he got back to his desk, bargaining hopefully. He watched from the office window, still on hold with a hiring firm that he knew didn’t like hiring Dockers, as she vanished into an alley with a guy he knew didn’t have the money to pay for what she was about to do. He knew the routine. She'd come in, ask for a job that she was too far down the list to get even if he had it, and vanish for a couple of days before she came back, more battered, a few more bruises. She wasn't Empire, or ABB, not with her looks, and she hated the Merchants with a passion only a recovering addict could have. Galvanate pulled her folder from the rejected pile, assessing the background check.  
  
The fresh arrest for soliciting at the front of the folder had just about destroyed her remaining chances of legitimate work, even if she'd had any before, which was ideal. The desperate were so useful. The shop owner your protection racket threatened one day could be the brute holding a knife to your neck the next. It was how he'd run the rest out of business in Chicago – give the little people a chance to fight back and they were vicious. The web showed how many people would pay for powers. Giving them out for favours to people who'd never afford tinker-tech or vials of coloured water.  
  
She staggered out of the alley, swearing, as the docker followed smugly. One dependent he saw on the file, a sister or a daughter, and the girl's age meant it could be either. The woman had told Danny she'd do anything to keep the girl safe even, it seemed, dockers who didn’t have the money to pay. She snatched the few dollar bills the john held out from his hand, too desperate to refuse even as she spat and stalked off. She'd be back.  
  
The location of the arrest let him know her patch. On the border between Merchants' turf, even if they claimed it, and the ABB, the area controlled by a pimp who was slipping through the cracks of both. Galvanate knew the area well enough that he'd be visiting it tonight. He was taking a hell of a chance, but if they’d let a Ward try to kill his daughter, he had nothing else to lose.


	4. Galvanic Movements - 3

**Galvanic Movements - Chapter Three**

  
He worked late that night, until the others had gone. It didn’t even draw comment, just something Danny Hebert did and had done even since Annette had died. Something that had cost him his daughter. Something that had cost Danny Hebert everything. Galvanate left, saying a quick goodbye to the night watchman to keep his cover, and didn’t return to his house. There was nothing there for him.  
  
The ragged, dark green, coat had been salvaged from the bags outside a thrift store the night before, then boiled until it was safe to wear, if dusty and torn. The green dye had floated off, leaving it patchy and unrecognisable in streaks. The gloves would cover his fingers, even if the left had a rip across the back. Canvas work pants were layered with torn jeans for protection, stuffed into steel-toed boots. He pulled the stocking mask over his head, made from one of Annette's from Hallowe'en, the pattern of webs and spiders enough to hide features, and turned the collar up, pulling the old woollen hat over his head. One tramp among all the others.  
  
He knew what he looked like. It was deliberate. No one would get close enough to the tatty clothes to see the mask. If they did, the cosh was in his left pocket, the gun in his right.  
  
The pimp did his rounds at eleven, to take his fee for letting the girls work his turf, and then again in the morning for his cut of their earnings. Galvanate did not intend to let him live to the second.  
  


#

  
The sound of a blow echoed from the alley, followed by kicks.  
  
"Hold out on me would you?" The pleas that followed were ones to familiar to Galvanate's ears. He stepped back into a doorway, crouched like one of Brockton's many homeless, and waited. The kicks continued, and his mouth twisted under the mask. If the idiot killed her, he'd have to find another candidate, or wait weeks for her injuries to heal. And the pimp was an idiot. On the patch full of broke dockers and day-labourers she was working, how much did he think the woman made? It worked for Galvanate's purposes though: an unjust accusation and an unearned beating would put her in exactly the right frame of mind.   
  
"Well, if you won’t pay up, maybe I should put your sister to work. Have the money tomorrow or she makes it up." The click of sharp shoes tapped on asphalt as the pimp strode off, his hired muscle following him. They didn’t even give a glance to the figure huddled on the step.  
  
Killing the man would be easy. Raise the gun, pull the trigger. Repeat. Easy, and utterly pointless, since it would start a turf war that Galvanate could not even take part in, and risk him being identified if they linked him to the kill. Without people, his power was useless. Without people, he couldn’t hold territory.  
  
With people, he could do anything and at the price of one minor criminal he was about to get them. He gave the pimp time to be streets away before he stood up from his corner by the doorway and began to walk steadily towards the alley. The prostitute was still sniffing, curled up on the ground as blood ran from her split lip. Her face raised behind a curtain of hair as she heard him, and she tensed. He stopped by the sobbing woman, giving her space.  
  
"The hell you want?" She sniffed, staggered to her feet, mascara smeared down her face. Arching her back to present herself, it was a shaky parody of seduction at best. He'd seen better. He'd had better. "Fifty bucks a trick."  
  
"You want revenge?"  
  
"Huh?" She looked at him, actually saw the mask between the hat and the turned-up coat and took a step back.  
  
"You want to be free of him?" he said, without moving. He'd had his fill of panicky interviewees in the day job.  
  
"I work for you and you kill him?" Under the cynicism, there was a flicker of indecision, bitterness, and longing.   
  
"No. You can." In the old days he would just have cracked the slut across the face, given her a gun and pointed her. This one required coaxing. He wanted loyalty and violence wouldn’t get it.  
  
“And then you shop me to the police.”  
  
“No, then you get on with business on your own terms.” And he'd know who had done the kill. So would she.  
  
"And you'll be around to keep me safe?" Her voice was disbelieving.   
  
"Better. You give me five percent of your take, and you won't ever have to fear clients, or pimps, again."  
  
"This is a trap, right?" She wasn't moving even as she scoffed. Partly fear of the insane, masked, man, but partly longing. Not all her hopes had been crushed yet, and he dangled the hook carefully.  
  
"How about a demonstration? You like it, you just have to kill him. Lasts twenty-four hours. You want more, you come back here, give me the cut then and I give you another boost."  
  
"Not into drugs."  
  
"If you were, we wouldn't be talking. Hold out your hand." She did, nervously. He turned his hand over, brushed her skin lightly with the exposed back of his, and then caught her hand. As she pulled back, he whipped out his knife, stabbed it down on her arm as she started to scream. The blade broke on her bare skin. Her scream choked off in amazement.  
  
"Limited invulnerability. Attack me and you'll find its limits." He wanted that ground rule set first. She was only half-listening, punching the wall once as hard as she could. She watched as paint flakes fell from her undamaged skin. Opening her hand, the shattered remains of her gaudy rings fell into her palm. She giggled.  
  
"What do you want me to do?" He knew the expression in her eyes, the piercing drive of a victim who finally had a chance to strike back. He had her.  
  
"Deal with him. Then meet me here tomorrow night with the cut and get another boost."   
  
"He's stronger than me." He bit down the sharp response that the man had a back, he’s got eyes, and it wasn’t his problem. He needed to reel her in, not break the line.  
  
"Get him alone. Let him break his fists on your skin. Then go for his throat." He pointed to the broken switchblade the pimp had left. She paused.  
  
"Can you keep my sister safe?"  
  
"I have people," he lied. She snatched the knife up from the ground, the sharp edge not even breaking her skin, and stalked out of the alley. Kicking her broken high heels off, she paused at the entrance, slammed her bare foot down onto a shattered bottle and began to laugh as the glass crunched. A good man would have pitied her pimp. A better man would call it justice. For a man of honour, it was just business.


End file.
